The Promise
by verymerrymary
Summary: "Eren, that would be so cruel," she placed his hand on her stomach and said, "if you two never got to know each other."
1. The Promise

He was yelling.

His voice was so strong, it surprised her. She couldn t move anymore, couldn t yell back. Between choking on a sob and anger, she d lost her power of speech. She still felt pain and when his hands grabbed her shoulder and he held on too tight, it hurt. It hurt and she winced and avoided his eyes, but his face was so close, and his scent so welcoming and familiar, she couldn t help it. She dared a look at him, his eyebrows were raised and although there was anger in his tone, she couldn t find any trace of it in his eyes. Little by little, his words started making sense again.

"Don t you get what s at stake here? Damn it! Why would you do something like that?"

She stood her ground, said: You needed my help.

"No, I didn t. I could have handled everything!"

She shook her head. You were surrounded -

"I could have handled it!" he said, and she bit her bottom lip. He realized then what was happening, how he was hurting her by holding her like that. He let go, feeling a knot in his stomach one could only describe as guilt. She waited for him and felt warmth within her when he touched her again, this time gently and carefully. He took off her jacket, rubbed her shoulders. His frown had yet to disappear, but he pulled her closer anyway and she drowned in him.

"I ve been trying to protect you, too," he told her, his breath tickling her skin. "You need to let me."

Feeling safe, she let her guard down.

"I can t lose you," she said. "I m scared of losing you. You can t ask me to stay still when you re out there "

"Why are you so stubborn?" he said. "You ever stop to think about me? You re scared of losing me, fine, I get it. Now, how do you think I feel?"

Surprised, she opened her mouth to speak but no sound came out.

He kept going.

"All those times you risked your life -how the fuck can you think it s okay for you to die? You think I want to live without you?"

"I "

"And today! Do you have any idea how reckless you were? Damn it, I could have lost you. Don t you get that? I could have lost you and "

He trailed off, she felt exposed when he looked down.

"I could have lost you both," he said after a moment.

She wanted to cry.

The child she was carrying, their child, was precious and loved. It was also their secret.

She d told him about the pregnancy a month ago. She d said it so bluntly that he had no time to react properly. He heard pregnant followed by a chain of words that foretold only tragedy.

They were at war. They were trying to save humanity. They had no place for a pregnant woman. They would send her back, probably not without berating and humiliating her for breaking their code, and she would have to give birth all alone, she would have to raise the child not knowing if the man she loved would ever come back and that wold be too much, that would hurt her too much. And even if they knew the child was his, the titan shifter, they would take her in for experiments and he couldn t accept that.

But they couldn t keep it a secret forever.

Their situation was doomed. Neither of them wanted to stop fighting, neither of them wanted to be apart. They were so young, two kids having a kid, and they wanted it all to happen in a world where they were free. They wanted their child to be able to run and play without fear.

Before telling him, she wondered if he d regret what they had done. What they had become. She wondered and wondered and wondered until the day she told him came. And after listening to all she had to say, all the tragedy that could happen, he kissed her softly on the tip of her nose, then on her lips and finally, he knelt down and pressed his ear against her belly.

"You won t hear anything, " she d told him.

"I don t care," he d said.

She allowed herself to smile. A sad smile, but a smile nonetheless. He got back up, his eyes were a bit red, he didn t want to cry in front of her but that didn t matter.

"We ll find a way. I ll make you happy, Mikasa. I ll make you both happy, I ll save us, I ll fix everything. I swear, I ll fix everything and we ll be free, we ll be all right."

"I believe you," was all she could say.

And now, here they were. Still lost, still trapped.

"I could have lost you both," he said again, mostly to himself. "So please, don t do that again."

"Don t get into trouble."

"Stop being stubborn. When you put yourself on the line like that, you re being selfish, Mikasa."

He was worried. It was in the way he moved, the way he talked and looked at her. There was no anger left, only worry and fear. She took his hand in hers, caressed it with her thumb.

"You re right, it s selfish. There are times when I wouldn t mind running away with you and never coming back."

She felt him squeezing her hand. It was his way of saying he felt the same. Because she knew he was tired. She knew his entire body ached every day and she knew, although he would loudly claim otherwise, she knew that deep down he wanted peace and quiet.

"But today," she said, "it wasn t about me. I..tried to stay away. But then I saw you, unprotected, and I thought that if you died, our baby would never get to meet you."

His expression finally softened.

"Eren, that would be so cruel," she placed his hand on her stomach and said, "if you two never got to know each other. That s why I did what I did today. And I only did it because I was sure I could help you. I was sure. I would never risk losing our baby and and it hurts that you think I would."

It took her a minute to realize she let herself cry. And it took another minute for her to realize he was pulling her in for another hug. He had one hand on her waist and the other on the back of her head, his fingers in her hair.

They stayed like that for a while. She buried her head on his chest while he swayed them both in a little dance. It felt so nice, so good, that she thought the world was a good place, after all. She thought they were finally free.

When he backed away, he smiled at her and kissed the tip of her nose, much like he did when he found out about the baby. She couldn t help but notice how much his scent had changed, how he had gone from smelling like a boy to smelling like a man and she loved him with all that she had.

"I didn t mean it like that. I know you would never do something stupid or something that could hurt our baby. I know that. But things happen and I don t want you taking risks."

" We won t be able to hide it anymore. "

"We ll find a way."

"We re leaving in a week for another field trip, Eren."

It made her heart ache the way he reacted to this. The way his head dropped and his body went stiff. She wanted to comfort him but she didn t know how, not when she needed comforting too.

"You can get sick," he said suddenly, looking back at her. "You can get sick!"

"What?"

"Pretend to be sick, we can heat up some rags and put them on your forehead and we can say you re in no shape to go out -"

"Eren, do you really think they ll "

"Yes, yes, I do. They ll let you stay here, waiting, probably doing paperwork assigned by Hanji. It s the best we can do for now. It s not much, but it s another week we re buying, Mikasa."

"But you -you ll be alone "

"And that s good, remember? I m trying to keep you safe here. I m the one protecting you now. Let me."

She closed her eyes.

Her heart was on her throat. She didn t want to stop fighting, stop being by his side.

But there was life growing within her, counting on her to be a shelter, to be a mother.

"All right," she said. "We can try."

He smiled.

"Thank you. After that, when I get back, we ll talk to Armin, and he ll know what to do."

He didn t give her time to respond and kissed her lips one, two, three, four times. Four little, noisy kisses on her lips before he knelt down and kissed her belly.

She ran her fingers through his hair as he talked to their unborn child and promised them all a happy future. 


	2. Morning Sickness

Things were a mess, he knew.

Mikasa didn't have to pretend anything.

It happened when Sasha came to talk to her while eating a potato. He tried to pay attention to what she was saying but he could only focus on Mikasa, who had gone pale.

Sasha kept talking and talking, waving that piece of food around as she expressed herself through gestures and Mikasa kept taking big breaths and turning her face away from the other girl. It wasn't until he looked down that he noticed her hands were shaking.

"Are you OK?" Sasha asked before he could.

Mikasa shook her head and tried to answer, but she only managed to bring her hand to her mouth.

"Are you gonna throw up?!" Sasha's voice was a little too loud this time, but no one else seemed to have heard it.

Eren couldn't even begin to process it, though. He was worried. Was she actually sick? Was it because of the pregnancy? He didn't know, he never had the time to learn about these things. He remembered a few people complaining about how much a pregnant woman's moods change but back then he was a child and didn't pay any attention at all.

Before he could react, Mikasa refused Sasha's help and ran back to the big house they were all using as HQ. Sasha looked at him confused, asking him once again if she was sick and he rushed his words out.

"She's been training nonstop, she's probably just tired. I'll see you later. If you see Armn, tell him I need to talk to him, all right?"

And then he ran after Mikasa.

He found her in their room, their secret room located at the last floor of the house, far away from the dorms. He was pretty sure the people in charge such as the Corporal knew about the room, and he was also pretty sure no one gave a damn about it.

When he and Mikasa first found it, it was dusty and abandoned and they didn't mind because they wanted to be alone but now it had become theirs. It had Mikasa's scent all over the sheets on the bed, her scent mixed with his, and frankly, he never understood how she could smell so good, how she could remind him of home whenever he rested his head on her chest.

She was sitting on the floor, looking a little less pale.

"What happened," he asked as he approached her. "Did you throw up?"

She nodded and he sat in front of her. The floor was cold, but he didn't mind. He looked around and she said, "I already cleaned it."

Her voice was so weak and low, it hit him like a punch. He caressed her face, finally noticing she was sweating. He tried to control himself, his emotions but he was pretty scared. They were alone in this. They had no one to ask about anything, no one to talk to. No one older. They had only each other and he was scared he couldn't take care of her.

"But…why do you think you got like this?"

Mikasa closed her eyes, shook her head. "Sasha with that potato. I think it was rotten or something."

He frowned. "Nah, it looked normal. She wouldn't eat it, otherwise."

"All I know is the smell on that thing was so strong, I couldn't take it."

He still didn't understand, but chose not to ask anything else. She was uncomfortable, he could tell by the way she kept pulling on her uniform.

He stood, his right knee, the one he hurt a month ago during a battle, popped. He ignored it, and picked Mikasa up from the floor. She was a strong girl, but she still had the gentleness and sweetness of a female's body and carrying her like this was so easy and so good for him, he wouldn't mind doing it every day. It just felt nice, her arms around his neck and her head on his chest.

He carried her to the bed, set her down with care. He found a spot in front of her once again and took off her jacket, threw it on the floor. He then asked her to lift her arms and took off her shirt. He watched as she let the cool wind hit her skin, and he tried not to get lost while staring at her, at the way her nipples got hard in the cold.

"Better?" he asked.

Mikasa nodded, smiled a little smile at him before throwing herself on his arms again. He held her as she used his chest as a pillow, and then kept running his fingers through her hair as he listened to what she had to say.

"My mother told me she spent her entire pregnancy sick. Sometimes, she couldn't even hug my father because his scent was too strong," she said, voice with bright, clear affection.

Eren smiled—it was a rare thing for Mikasa to talk about her parents. And because it was a rare thing, it took him a minute to understand what she had just said.

"Wait, so this is normal?"

She looked up at him. "What is?"

"What happened today!"

"You mean me getting sick?"

He nodded.

"Yes," she said, and then added: "My mother never lied to me."

He let out a sigh of relief. She pulled away from him, returning to the spot she was a few minutes ago. She touched his face with her fingertips, traced his jawline and asked, "were you worried?"

He scrunched up his face in that charming way of his. "Of course I was! I thought something bad was happening! You were fine and then you got sick out of nowhere and I thought there was something wrong with you and the baby."

He never really knew just how much her heart melted right there.

"There's nothing bad happening," she said. "We're fine."

Eren couldn't help his smile, couldn't help looking down. She grabbed his hand and placed it on her belly. "We're fine," she said again.

"Next time, don't get worried. There's no need to."

He looked back at her. "It's going to happen again?"

"Probably," she said.

"…I'm gonna learn about these things. I promise."

"Eren, you don't have to."

"I want to."

She smiled. "All right," she said, and went back into his arms, her naked torso against the fabric of his shirt.

He held her tight, breathing into her scent and thinking about ending this war and finding a new home for the three of them.


End file.
